There is a detail on some 500's that I have often seen incorrectly presented and which isn't even slightly important but which irritates me. It is the method of fixing the aluminim chassis-plate to the bulkhead. Often you see this pop-riveted and occasionally there are self-tappers. As far as I can tell it should probably be fixed using these unusual rubber rivets. I wonder if anyone knows of a source for these. The one photographed is from a car I have started to restore.

LIS_9870 by Peter Thompson, on Flickr

Note that on this RHD, UK specification car there is another plate showing the British Standard which is something I guess is omitted for non-UK cars?
Looking at repro copies of these chassis-plates and puting aside any quality issues there might be, there appear to be several slight variations in the shape, layout and typeface. Also, contrary to some descriptions I have seen, not all chassis -plates bear the colour-code for the paintwork.

I have never worked out the Paint code and there is also a parts code

The repros are a case of take your pick... you need to see them close up and compare them to your original... I think people with a modern metal printer simply take a picture from a book or something and make it fit the rough dimension..
I do have a collection of pictures of these plates for N cars, and they do vary, from chassis and engine number to Chassis, Engine, Paint and Spares code.
and this is just the N series over a period of 3 years!!!
Something that I did not realize, us ultra exclusive owners have.... the N series Chassis plate actually has the full engine number not the 110.000 designation..
so we often refer to a full matching numbers car, where the plate matches the engine and the chassis numbers..

the font is a fiat only typeface and the point size matches that on the engines too

as for what hold them on... again for perfectionists this is probably a can of worms as it will depend on the year, N's tend to be by small Philips screws... as always unless you have a totally original authenticated un restored car how do you know what was original... (there exists a couple of truly authentic N's), but the time I have spent trying to find out just one model is unreal, to expand this across other ....
As you have said, this is where such a forum can be good...

On my "F"s I think the engine number does appear on that plate; it's the "No. for spares.".

Here's Murf's. There seems to be a pattern in that the engine number is around 10,000 lower than the chassis number in both of my (basket) cases.
The 1969 has no colour code whereas the 1971 does.
Please note the yellow insulating tape which has been replaced as original. My theory is that it may indicate a wiring loom which is modified for RHD.
BRA_8619 by Peter Thompson, on Flickr

Now I will be called "Saddo Geek"
I have a spreadsheet of every known 500 N from 57-60 where I have engine and chassis number and a photo, started by the Italians but taken up a notch by me The Italians even have who owns the car in many cases and know the history of almost any N that comes up for sale..
They have access to documentation but will not reveal who has it or what it is exactly, but they can date cars more accurately than I have seen anyone do..
I extrapolate the numbers in my spreadsheet and can give a reasonable date of manufacture (which is different to registration). We can even say if the engine/chassis plate has been changed (apparently fiat did this under warranty claims I believe if the engine failed...) as the engine number does not fit the date for the car..
there are so few 500N's this is possible for me to run regular searches across the world for cars for sale and in auctions...
We have other reasons to maintain this list, thefts etc are an obvious one...
But i have no idea how we would do this for other models. but what a data base that would be..

What this spreadsheet has show is.. European Jollys were randomly built, obviously to order, but US Jolly's (and it seems logical) were built in batches... possibly 5-10 at a time.

For me South Africa, Nz Oz and America are where N's are to be found, and SA has to be the land of early RHD cars.if someone can provide me with all the advertising sites for cars.. I will add them to my searches.... although been a bit lax recently

What a sad Git am I eh!!!

fiat500 said:

On my "F"s I think the engine number does appear on that plate; it's the "No. for spares.".

Here's Murf's. There seems to be a pattern in that the engine number is around 10,000 lower than the chassis number in both of my (basket) cases.

Click to expand...

When I bought my first 500, a ‘72 L, I looked into this and was told that it was the special number used when ordering spares. I wonder if you’ve checked to see if it is your engine number? I never have as I’ve followed what I was told but I will check in the morning. Why Fiat would give a different number purely for spares and not use the chassis number seems daft but, of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not the case.

Here is a picture of the chassis plate on my ‘62 D. The chassis number starts 376.

Bigvtwin996 said:

For me South Africa, Nz Oz and America are where N's are to be found, and SA has to be the land of early RHD cars.if someone can provide me with all the advertising sites for cars.. I will add them to my searches....

Click to expand...

A valuable thing, even if for browsing and drooling
I do see some N models come up

In NZ, the trademe.co.nz seems to be the most popular source. It's where I got my baby and where I've seen more than one N crop up.

In Australia, ebay.com.au or carsales.com.au have the odd 500 crop up. Carsales is the better spot I think. Gumtree.com.au also has a few but I've never seen an N come up there.

Occasionally I think of buying more from NZ simply because they're so much cheaper there. Then I realise it would lead to a lot of trouble.


Back to the original post, now I'm wondering about my own chassis plate...

I tried to check my photo records as it's so cold outside. I think you will be right Ian (ie...me wrong!)
It would make sense to have a code that said where the driver's seat was.placed and what level of trim etc. which engine and chassis numbers don't differentiate.

fiat500 said:

It would make sense to have a code that said where the driver's seat was.placed and what level of trim etc. which engine and chassis numbers don't differentiate.

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You ask to much!!!
and you expect another plate!!!
that would have been 20 Lira

And I'm sure I can see where my Drivers seat is placed!
Its the sort of looks like the passenger one but has a round thing in front of it

......and in it!
I should be able to remember as I am old enough that I have bought spares from the Fiat dealer in Preston when they still stocked most items. I can even remember the store man's full name.

I bet your first car was one of those that had a "tiler" to steer it..


I must be really bored this weekend....
I do believe I may even have made some useful contributions...

I prefer to forget my first car because it was a Renault 5 and not the sporty one. My first 500 was like BigV's "N"s in some respects, with actual baked beans cans in the sills....and I put them there in all innocence.
Just checked and Ian is correct that the spares number is completely different from engine or chassis.
Now we need to crack that code. New thread on the horizon.

My l had those rubber fixings. I got them both out without damaging them but the little buggers broke when trying to put them back.
My D didn't have a plate on it when I got it. But when the recovery guys son was sitting in the car whilst we pushed it onto my drive he had a rummage round to see if there was any money, and found the chassis plate amongst a load of old leaves and mouse droppings.

http://www.ricambio.co.uk/69-fiat/2...ug-2--classic-fiat-500-126?limit=obbkiycabfiu


here they are!

Franko500 said:

http://www.ricambio.co.uk/69-fiat/2...ug-2--classic-fiat-500-126?limit=obbkiycabfiu


here they are!

Click to expand...

"problem" solved...ta!

Franko500 said:

http://www.ricambio.co.uk/69-fiat/2...ug-2--classic-fiat-500-126?limit=obbkiycabfiu


here they are!

Click to expand...

Crikey, are they dear enough for what they are?

IanEmery said:

Crikey, are they dear enough for what they are?

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That's Ricambio for you.!

IanEmery said:

Why Fiat would give a different number purely for spares and not use the chassis number seems daft but, of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not the case.

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It does seem to be the case that they have put a different production number to each car in addition to the chassis and engine number. I checked my two plates and although the cars are the same spec. the numbers are quite different and so relate quite closely to each chassis number.
I guess there was a filing-system somewhere, in which they recorded the exact build specification of each car. When the bodyshells of my cars were built they could potentially have been "F" or "L", LHD or RHD, with different sidelamp locations, different front indicator lense colours and presumably there were other detailed differences for different export territories.
I'm still baffled as to why they couldn't have recorded this against the chassis number and before computers, how complicated it might have been to ensure that every Fiat dealer had those records.
In practise, you would be ordering parts in your country or region and unless you were unusual in having an imported vehicle, the almost certain fact would be that there would be few possible variations in parts you could require which makes that build number irrelevant.
Notwithstanding the above, I have learned something new about my car.

I had an email conversation with a guy at the Fiat archive somewhere in Italy, I am guessing Turin?

I was queering the colour of my car, as it the same colour as yours Peter Turquoise Blue. But all the colour charts I have seen suggest that, that colour wasn’t available in the year of manufacture of my car in 1966? But it’s definitely the original colour and it’s definitely a 1966 car, so I was a bit ? flummoxed ?.

He told me the manufacturing records were very limited, they didn’t hold records that matched chassis numbers to engine numbers. Also they didn’t hold a record of what colour each car was painted to a particular chassis number. He said all the kept was a record of chassis numbers and year of manufacture.

I would imagine looking at the chassis plate, they probably had some sort of press on the production line where it simply incremented by a digit every time they fed a plate into the press, before fitting it to the car.

I can’t remember, it’s too cold to go out and have a look but didn’t they also have a bit on the plate for the colour code of the car? That quite often was left blank?

They must have stamped the actual chassis number on the bulkhead when they were making that particular panel I would imagine?

Vitesse said:

I can’t remember, it’s too cold to go out and have a look but didn’t they also have a bit on the plate for the colour code of the car? That quite often was left blank?

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Yes, the plate on my L had a space and colour code on it. As it happened that car had originally been Positano but was now a bright Bianca

fiat500 said:

.........
I'm still baffled as to why they couldn't have recorded this against the chassis number and before computers, how complicated it might have been to ensure that every Fiat dealer had those records.
............
Notwithstanding the above, I have learned something new about my car.

Click to expand...

Happy to help with your education